{"id":3165,"date":"2011-12-07T13:00:10","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T21:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=3165"},"modified":"2011-12-08T12:12:29","modified_gmt":"2011-12-08T20:12:29","slug":"correspondence-the-sporting-life-take-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2011\/12\/correspondence-the-sporting-life-take-five\/","title":{"rendered":"Correspondence: The Sporting Life & “Take Five”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rifftides<\/em> reader and Detroit Free Press<\/em> music critic Mark \"\"<\/a>Stryker alerts us to an improbable happening in Chicago—a debate on an ESPN sports radio program over the authorship of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Take Five.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The story on drummer Ted Sirota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s website includes audio of the argument. From Sirota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s preamble:<\/p>\n

I told him I was a jazz drummer and he put me right through! That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first time I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever been treated better by saying I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a jazz drummer! Usually they tell me to go away or go through the back door or the kitchen. Anyway, the whole thing was pretty funny. Check it out. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To listen to the rumble, click here<\/a>. Sirota doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t identify the debating experts. Maybe one of our Chicago readers can.<\/p>\n

Mark Stryker adds:<\/p>\n

Not that those guys ever would, but they should have you on the show as Desmond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biographer to talk about the song and related issues and ironies.<\/p>\n

On a somewhat related note, there was a sports talk show here in Detroit for a while that used Lee Morgan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sidewinder\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> (original recording) as its theme song. I heard the host \u00e2\u20ac\u201c well known as a huge Bruce Springsteen fan — refer to Lee Morgan and the song by name once, but I never heard anything like the extensive discussion about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Take Five\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the Chicago station. I always wanted to call the station here and ask if the folks knew that there were two Detroiters on that record \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Barry Harris and Joe Henderson \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or that Lee had been one of the great prodigies in jazz history and died under tragic circumstances, or that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sidewinder\u00e2\u20ac\u009d had been used in a car commercial.<\/p>\n

Jazz can show up in some pretty crazy, unexpected places — otherwise improbable films, TV shows, commercials, radio, literary references, etc. One that comes to mind is the use of Mingus’s “Haitian Fight Song”<\/a> behind a love scene in “Jerry Maguire” (details at this web page<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Maybe others can give more examples \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Coda: Regarding “Jerry Maguire” — the Nanny in the film is played as a stereotypical jazz geek but he misidentifies the date of the Miles\/Trane recording. Also, and I’m going from memory here, I think at the very end of the scene Tom Cruise reacts to the music (Mingus) by saying in a bewildered tone, “What is this music?” My initial read is that he’s actually breaking character but they decided to keep the line in the film.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rifftides reader and Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker alerts us to an improbable happening in Chicago—a debate on an ESPN sports radio program over the authorship of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Take Five.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The story on drummer Ted Sirota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s website includes audio of the argument. From Sirota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s preamble: I told him I was a jazz drummer and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}